


Anymore

by Anecdoche (so_psychso)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Chairs, Depression, Ep 170 spoilers, Isolation, Lonely!Martin, M/M, Meta, The Lonely - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:21:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24539932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_psychso/pseuds/Anecdoche
Summary: He will be alone, never again.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 7
Kudos: 68





	Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> crying cat meme dot png, lads
> 
> (wrote this in a half hour after the ep dropped, sorry for mistakes)

It used to be comfortable, the armchair beside his mother’s bed. Plush cushions adorned with a crocheted throw picked up from some charity shop or other. Because mum hasn’t crocheted in years, and she never taught him, and when he saw those colorful squares it made something light up in his chest. a memory that isn’t quite his. A hope that it might become one someday. He spends a lot of time sitting there, reading to his mother, feeding her, reapplying flannels, changing the blankets. 

Within a year of her condition, there’s an indent in the seat cushion. A few more months, and the stitching along the left armrest has come undone, frayed from his worrying fingernails. Another year, and he doesn’t sit there anymore. It just makes him hurt.

-

It’s supposedly ergonomic, the swivel chair at his new desk at his new job at this new juncture in his life. A proper job, this. Something to finally pay the bills. Not by much, not by half, but enough. More than enough, if he keeps scrimping the way he always has. And he will. 

And he _won’t_ say a word about how uncomfortable his chair is. Not that it leaves his back in a state of pangs and twinges that barely work out by next morning. Not that it squeaks something awful when he’s trying to sneak off to the break room for an extra cuppa because he’d had to skip breakfast that morning. 

He makes tea for everyone, just to be on the safe side, and tries not to beam too broadly at the thanks he receives. It’s alright, though. His awful, _awful_ chair gets him back in the right state of mind. Hunched and focused and jittery. Still, it doesn’t hurt as much as the armchair, and for that, he’s grateful.

-

The thing about care homes is, either they try too hard, or they put up no pretenses, and this one falls firmly into the latter category. But it’s all he could afford. A single, dour room, subdued tans and nauseous eggshell white. Subtle chemical smells, and no chairs beside the bed. No, they’re reserved solely for the waiting area, which is where he spends most of his time anyway, on the rare occasions she lets him visit. No crochet throws. No claims to correct the contriteness in his spine. But he stays there, not moving, not complaining. Not anything but the thing she might someday want to see again.

A perfect, penitent son.

-

He doesn’t sit. He can’t sit. He can’t stay in the waiting room and he will _not_ sit. He demands from every assigned nurse and doctor to know what’s going on, to get any updates. Is he breathing? Is he stable? What do you mean no pulse? But he’s alive? No I bloody will _not_ have a seat, let me see him right _now_! 

He gets there, eventually. Crammed into a hard, plastic thing designed to agitate you from spending too long beside the one you lo—

Because the doctors and the nurses have to keep coming in, yes, of course he knows this. They have to do their job. They have to save him. They have to get him breathing again. Get his pulse back where it belongs. He’s not just a mind, goddammit. Not just neural blips on the hundred-odd scans and tests they keep putting him through. He’s a body and a voice, a gaze and a laugh. A _survivor._ And he will wait here as long as it takes until Jon wakes up. Until there’s more to what they have than just another fucking chair beside another fucking death bed.

He waits. He waits so patiently, painfully, purposefully. 

And when he doesn’t anymore, he leaves the chair there. Because a part of him thinks, maybe one day he’ll come back to it. Because maybe then, it will mean something.

-

He doesn’t sit at his mother’s funeral. There’s too much standing to do. With relatives. Over the casket. Beside the freshly buried grave. No chemical smells anymore. Just dirt.

And no chairs.

-

And they’re all here. Every one of them. 

The threadbare armrest with its crocheted falsities.

The stoic thing of cheaply bought office supplies and wheels in desperate need of some WD-40.

The faux-suede cushion and wood smelling of old skin and abandonment.

The hard, blue plastic that wouldn’t even deign to soak up his tears. 

There’s another one, too. Unremarkable, unrecognizable, filling in the gaps of others he’s long since forgotten. Oak wood chastisements in the headmaster’s office for so many missed assignments. Scratchy afternoons on two hour buses because of course mum can’t pick him up. More plastic and fake leather than he can count on a thousand hands.

He rotates through them, and each accompanying memory ceases to be, and he forgets how uncomfortable they are.

Until something else is there. Not a chair. Or fog or window or mirror. It’s hard and plastic, yes. It’s uncomfortable, yes. It _hurts_. Yes. And he remembers. And he sits. And he hurts. And he hurts.

And he hurts. Until, finally, it stops hurting. And he’s not sitting. And he’s being embraced. And he’s in love. And _he_ is here. Jon. And himself. Here.

Here.

And they leave, because they can. Because they’re just chairs, and there’s no reason to sit around wallowing anymore. 

Because there’s Jon, and him, and here, and _there._ The place beyond this place that he can finally leave behind because he’s done it. He’s made it. He’s picked himself up, and he’s leaving. 

And he’s not alone in this endeavor. 

And at the end of it, they will sit down together, and they will breathe the world anew, and Martin Blackwood will know what it is to not be alone. 

Not anymore, wasn’t it? And now— _now—_ never again. 

Yes, he will be alone, never again. 


End file.
